Make no bones about it, it has been an underwhelming year for Scotland’s retailers and no mistake.
Monthly sales have been positive on just two occasions, in January and April, and total sales over a rolling 12-month period to October show a fall of 0.5% on the previous year’s performance.
The dog-eat-dog food retail sector has proven to be 2014’s major battleground with discounters like Aldi and Lidl taking the fight to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons.
And what we have seen has not been a momentary, one-off victory.
It has been a sustained assault that has caught the bloated Big Boys off their guard and left them bloodied, battered and bruised.
They have countered with heavy promotions, discounting and incentives at the petrol pumps but the vice-like grip in which they have held the food market for decades has been loosened and continues to weaken.
Scottish Retail Consortium/KPMG figures show the sector is 1.2% down on a rolling 12-month average and the past quarter has seen that rate of decline increase to 2.3%.
Specific figures aren’t available for how smaller food retailers are coping but it does not take the brain of Britain to work out just how tough things must be for those trying to eke out a living in a crowded marketplace where huge financial muscle is being flexed.
And while things have been slightly better in the non-food sector where there has been a 0.1% improvement in sales over the course of the past year, it is hardly a performance to write home about.
It is in that context that Christmas looms large on the horizon.
For many companies, be it micro, small, medium or large, the next six to eight weeks are crucial.
A poor festive season means closed doors and white-washed windows. And, of course, jobs lost and business dreams shattered.
For the big high street chains getting Christmas right, as Debenhams so spectacularly failed to do last year, is not just a full-time job, it is an obsession.
And it is one that really starts in earnest this week with Black Friday, an invention of the big American retailers that has made its way across the Pond in recent years.
Essentially it is a promotional tool which uses the hook of massive online discounting to set the festive feeding frenzy in train. And boy does it work.
But before you jump on the broadband bandwagon, I’d ask you to remember the thousands of independent retailers who are the real backbone of our high streets but have little or no marketing with which to make a splash.
Small Business Saturday on December 6 is a grassroots movement supported by the likes of the Federation of Small Businesses which is designed to reconnect the digital generation with the retail gems on their doorsteps.
And just think of the difference we, the consumer, could make to our own communities by supporting local small business.
If every one of us pledged to spend even a proportion of our festive budget in our local shops then 2015 will look a lot brighter for thousands of hard-pressed Scottish retailers and their army of workers.
That would be a happy Christmas indeed.